Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

"A bit late to be coming in and offering assistance at this point, Ezra." Avery said with an exasperated tone over his team's comms.

Off in the distance, a dark gray ship came into view from behind an asteroid.

Ezra had arrived midway through Avery's dogfight with Doyle, but had refrained from getting involved since his leader seemed to be handling the situation well.

At the very end, however, when Doyle had pretended to surrender. Ezra had primitively fired his railgun just in case the man decided to try and ram into the Dauntless with his own vessel.

It was only because Doyle had tried to run away again at the end so hastily that the railgun projectile shot through his thrusters rather than the center of mass of the craft.

From a certain point of view, Doyle could be considered very lucky. With no weapons or thrusters left, he was no longer a threat in any way. That meant that there was no reason for further action. He would get to live.

Of course, that might not truly be the ideal outcome.

To dissuade the exact thing that had happened here, the Dramid Alliance had some pretty strict rules.

Considering what he had done, Doyle was most likely looking at a pretty heavy sentence of hard labor for a long time.

"Kasandra, have we gotten a response from the Alliance Police stationed in this system?" Avery asked now that the battle was over.

Obviously, they could not just call it a day and fly away after such a major incident. The battle itself was going to have been short in comparison to all of the procedures that would need to be taken care of in the aftermath.

"Yeah, we've received several transmissions from them since we sent out the first message after dealing with Doyle's followers and destroying their communication jammers. I expect that they'll be here shortly enough."

Hearing this, Avery sucked in a deep breath and began rubbing his face.

Doyle's attack had been stressful to say the least. Not only had it come out of nowhere, but the threat to Avery and his team's lives had been very real.

Careful strategy and their opponent's own incompetence had been what saw them achieving a victory without any losses.

Except, as he started to think about it, Avery realized that there was still one person from their group that was missing.

"Kasandra, has Kaiden contacted us at all yet?"

Eyes going wide, Kasandra looked at their records but there had been no transmissions from her brother. This meant that most likely he was still locked in battle, or something bad had happened to him.

Before she could even ask, Avery contacted Ezra and Olivia and told them to keep a watch over Doyle. It seemed unlikely but there was a slight possibility that some of his followers might show up to help him out. If he managed to slip away somehow, it would prove disastrous.

Nevertheless, Avery could not ignore Kaiden's absence.

He was not like Doyle, willing to sacrifice his own followers to further his aims. To him, his team was his family, and he treated them as such. If any of them were in trouble, he was going to help them out if he could.

Flying back to where his team had originally broken off, Avery followed the traces of Kaiden's battle through the asteroid field.

Eventually they made it to the sight where the final battle had taken place and found the debris field left over from Doyle's men and Kaiden's ship.

"No. That's not possible." Kasandra said, her voice tinged with an immense despair that chilled both Avery and Jasmine.

Tears started to flow from her eyes uncontrollably at the prospect of having lost the only family she had left.

It hurt so much that her breathing became unsteady, and she clutched her chest as if she was in immense pain.

Avery recognized that she was about to have a panic attack and rushed over to her without first confirming that Kaiden was really dead.

Fortunately, Jasmine remained a bit more level-headed. She did not have anything against Kaiden, but she was not particularly close to him and was able to keep her calm better than Kasandra and Avery.

"It's a little early to be counting him among the dead yet. The wreckage of his ship is here, but the sensors did not pick up the cockpit. If I recall correctly, Kasandra, you used to have the exact same type of vessel as him and it had a detachable cockpit that could be used as an emergency escape measure."

A bit of hope returned to Kasandra's eyes and Avery hastily regained his composure.

After checking over the sensor readings Jasmine had taken, Avery confirmed that at the very least Kaiden had not died here.

"The momentum of the ejection should not have carried him too far. Let's keep going." Avery said reassuringly.

Flying around in a typical search pattern, it did not take long for the Dauntless to pick up the signal of Kaiden's the emergency beacon.

At full speed Avery traced the signal back to its source and found the fully intact cockpit of Kaiden's ship floating through the asteroid field.

"There's a confirmed life sign onboard. He might have just barely gotten through it, but it looks like your brother is still alive."

The smile that bloomed on Kasandra's face when she heard this was almost mesmerizing.

With her right hand she wiped the tears away from her face and sent a message to her brother.

No response came at first.

It was unclear if he had not received the signal or if he was just unable to contact them back.

The answer to the question came soon, as the cockpit's lights flashed off and on repeatedly. Apparently Kaiden had gotten his sister's message but was unable to send a reply for one reason or another.

"I'd like to say that we bring him in immediately, but I don't think that the cockpit will fit in the cargo hold right now. We'll need to rearrange some things first." Avery said.

Last time, when he had rescued Kasandra, her cockpit had just barely fit. Yet, unlike then, when Avery was still just starting out, his vessel was carrying quite a bit more items than before.

Once they had sent Kaiden a message to wait for just a little longer, Avery, Kasandra, and Jasmine got to work moving things out of the cargo bay into other rooms.

It was a bit of a tedious process, but thanks to the couple of service drones onboard that specialized in this kind of work, everything got finished quickly enough.

With enough space to accept Kaiden's cockpit now, Avery locked on a tractor beam and with the assistance of the Dauntless' recovery drones, reeled him in.

"Okay, your brother is safe and secure in the cargo hold now. There's nothing else to worry about, so why don't you go get him and bring him here. It's time for us to head back to the others and finish up this mess."

Nodding her head, Kasandra did as Avery asked and rushed to the cargo bay to see her brother. After the scare she had been through, she wanted to see him alive and well with her own eyes to confirm that he was alright.